The Lair

You’re not in SL for real till you’re stopped at a checkpoint and asked for your ID card. Which is fine, except that my ID card is 14 years old and the plastic on either side is peeling off. Oh, and the letters are faded and nearly unintelligible. In short, it’s probably the worst possible means of establishing that I am whom I say I am - and the guys in the checkpoint spend long, nervous minutes staring at it before letting me go.

A while ago, I figured that speaking in Sinhala to the army chaps manning the checkpoints was the best way to get through without hassle. Clearly, since I don’t have a winning smile to fall back on - being charming is my best defence against being strip searched by random sadist security folks. So far, it’s working out ok.

Welcome to Colombo.

Been here a few days now - already annoyed with the craptastic monsoon rains which threaten to drown everyone in the city in a deluge of muddy water… but the sun and heat which intersperse those rainstorms makes it all worth while. You don’t get this heat and humidity anywhere else (ok, so maybe you do - but not exactly this level of noise, smog and errant thuggy three wheeler guys to go with it) so I’m soaking this all up.

Further proof that everyone in Colombo has fewer than 3 degrees of separation - had to go to my aunt’s place to be a witness at some document signing rigmarole. Inevitably, everyone else seemed to be operating on BPST (Brown Person Standard Time [thanks, Sin]). An hour and a half after the scheduled time, the notary and the other people show up. The moment the lawyer/notary was introduced, I figured that I had seen her somewhere before and it was over a chessboard (yeah, used to play chess in school. I was always this geeky). Random lawyer turned out to be someone I had last met 15 years or so ago. Dammit. That’s Colombo. Exchange of email addresses and random “so where did person X, Y and Z end up?” queries later, I was on my way.

The first meetup of the original crowd has been scheduled. If you’re one of those and you haven’t gotten an IM or phone call from me yet - you know how to get in touch… Please do.

I love Cartman. But I digress.

There was a bandwagon rolling a few weeks ago where people on it were telling us all what they liked and didn’t like about good old SL. Well, ever the person to jump on a rickety bandwagon that’s about to lose its wheels, I thought I’d join the fray. Funny thing is, I call SL home - but I’m no longer very sure if that’s an accurate definition. I’ve spent too long in places that are most definitely not SL; so home is the place where I’m not at the moment… if that makes any sense.

Read the rest of this entry »

Titab reminds me that I haven’t commented on Eurovision yet. Yes, I watched it. I am only slightly ashamed at having submitted to a display of the cheesiest songs ever. You know the standard excuses? I only read Playboy for the articles? How about a new one? I only watch Eurovision for the snarky voiceover by Wogan.

Also, it’s official, folks. Dot-com mania is back on us all over again. Seen on a mailing list I read regularly:

My web startup uses Greasemonkey to make a parallel universe, where people can write everywhere and make visible bookmarks on pages they like. If you are interested in beta testing, check out http://stix.to

A business plan which revolves around a Greasemonkey script. Well, I’m pretty sure it could work but … but … well, I dunno.

And three for the price of one … Did you hear about the Congolese technician who was plucked out from the lobby of the BBC and made to go on air to comment on Apple Computer vs Apple Corps? Well, here you go. A hilarious followup found here. Now, one more observation to make (which was pointed out to me on TV yesterday). Ladies and gents, Guy Goma. Now, he was mistaken for Guy Kewney. Umm. Yeah. Ok, not to be racist or anything but that is a rather significant difference in appearances, innit? I’m linking to the video because this is too good to miss. Check out the unfortunate Guy Goma’s reaction when he realizes he’s on air and being asked questions about things he knows nothing about … It’s priceless.

Perhaps an appropriate blend of cynicism and unfortunate home truth … do not communicate with clients. Like with cartoons involving everyone’s favourite anti-hero, Dilbert; the truth lies somewhere inbetween, I suspect.

I’ve been reading quite a bit of material - sadly, with conflicting viewpoints more often than not.The extremes range from Getting Real (specs mean nothing, features mean nothing, everything should be minimalist) to Berkun.

Opinions? Like most people, I have my own views on what might work and what might be successful (and what might not be). In a while, I’ll get to try out some of this stuff in the real world.

About that hardware hackery I alluded to earlier … Yet another episode in my unceasing warfare with things mechanical. A war in which I come off second best more often than not, mind you.

The task, should I decide to accept it (and it’s not like I had a real choice here) was to install two new memory DIMMs on my shiny new Dell notebook. Two separate threads of thought arise from this, which I’ll pursue individually.

You know, a long long looooong time ago (think back to the time when Star Wars movies were initially released); some male relative of mine asked (as uncles tend to do), “so, do you want to be an engineer when you grow up?”. I nodded my head enthusiastically and everyone was pleased, pats on the head were dispensed in avuncular fashion and all was well. Several days later, I realized … oh, hey. He didn’t mean that fun job where you get to drive the locomotives, but the more boring job which involves things like constructing bridges. I present this charming anecdote to you, gentle reader, as proof positive of two things. First, I am easily confused. Secondly, I have about as much mechanical ability as a rodent on a hamsterwheel.

Fast forward a couple of decades (and then some) later. I am now (in some circles) “the computer guy”. Remember Djikstra? “Computer Science is as much about computers as Astronomy is about telescopes”. Well, see; I’m a computer scientist (or I like to delude myself of this, at any rate). Hardware? I am mystified. Printers? They positively hate me. A while ago, I had the (mis-)fortune to work at a computer hardware company for a couple of months. Extremely high profile company, but at the end of the day; their job was just like any other computer hardware guy’s job - it just paid better. My experiences there? I wanted to learn more about plugging shit into computers. Instead, I learnt that computer hardware and peripherals are evil and must not be trusted. If there was any socket I could plug in the wrong way, I did it. If there was any way to make things fizz and spark and spew out magic smoke, I found it first. Hardware and I, ladies and gents, was a match made in hell. It was a match worthy of Paul and Heather McCartney and about as expensive.

Only, sometimes we’re faced with our own limitations staring at us in the face. I wanted this memory upgrade. I wanted it so bad I could taste it. So I did what any aspiring Machiavelli would do - went to a guy who did like hardware and asked real nicely if he could fit this memory chip in for me.

We had a look at the diagram. Oh, and Dell - you may be evil in lots of ways but kudos for publishing this stuff on the web. Yeah, yeah, so DIMM B was easy. Even I could do that. So I did it. DIMM A? Remove hinge flap. Remove keyboard (!!!?). Oh dear. So, now we’re looking for a plastic scribe. My friend who does hardware used to work on an oilrig. He has this massive toolbox filled with every single tool known to mankind. But what the heck is a plastic scribe? Uh. We don’t know. So, we used a credit card. Then the drac hardware curse struck. One end of the hinge flap unhinged just fine (with repeated digging from a credit card). The other end? Would not budge. Curses! Foiled again.

So, to cut a long long description of my futile attempts short; I went to the real professionals. Asked nicely. Took the notebook down to the hardware lab. They took one look at it and scratched their heads. Uh, Yeah. I already replaced the easy DIMM slot. Not looking too confident, they told me to come back in a while and that it would be fixed. I have a feeling this story hasn’t ended quite yet.

The takehome moral of this story - do not give me computer hardware and expect me to know what the heck fits where. Software? Yeah, I can handle that. Mechanical and electronic shit? Good luck. Even if I did know (ok, so I was perhaps overstating my cluelessness just a tad); the drac curse of hardware ensures that you will never ever see your hardware in working condition again.

Update: Good grief, they did it. I now have more memory on this notebook than I did hard disk space err.. a decade ago. Now to get rid of the crapware that Dell installs by default. Whee.

Or … a good impersonation thereof.

I came back from my little trip and then realized that thanks to creative scheduling, I had a little over a week in which to get everything packed up and head off home for a holiday. A holiday of sorts; because I’ll actually be reasonably busy with various odds and ends when I do get home.

So, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time plugged into the real world - ie: not at my machine. I’ve also been spending money at a truly frightening rate and thus, need to slow down or face bankruptcy.

Watched Bring Back the A-team on TV last night. Unsurprisingly, everyone of the reunited actors/actresses in the movie had aged considerably but most of them were recognizable. Also unsurprisingly, I’m now motivated to hunt down the DVDs for the series.

I just have two papers, a bit of hardware hackery, a massive print job and sundry other tasks to do before I can wind up here. Woo.

It’s been 4 days since I landed in the south eastern United States and I’m now in full-on entertainment mode - the conference that I came here for concluded yesterday. Obviously, this seemed like a great time to run to the nearest Radio Shack and get a universal adaptor for my laptop charger. So, that’s what I did a couple of hours ago.

The new adage for the notebook era goes something like this - Take a laptop anywhere you want, but good luck making it plug in. The fiddly little plug points here didn’t take the massive European style plug - so I was forced to scrounge internet access from public machines at the hotel the first few days when my lappie battery ran out of juice. No, I did not enjoy that. Had one Aha! moment though. Or rather; a “This is Unix! I know this!!” moment. The hotel I’m staying in uses Linspire and Mozilla (not Firefox, but Mozilla). Sadly, it appears that one of their motivations for using Linux was making sure people weren’t too comfortable with that machine - they forbid anything other than checking email and most of the nice Windows compatibility shortcuts in Linspire had been removed (or never installed). Thank heavens I know what an xterm is.

But to the real business - an update on the ogles so far.
Nekkid chix = 0 (if you were surprised at this, don’t be. This is the United States, home of wardrobe malfunctions)
Hawt chix = eleventy billion (not as many as Miami, apparently - but a fair number)
Offers from random taxi drivers to take me to strip joints = 3 (maybe it’s their standard welcome for all tourists. The taxi drivers around here seem to spend a lot of time in the strip clubs themselves.)
Absolutely batshit insane taxi guys = 2 (One guy was so kooky it was hilarious. Obviously, I didn’t want to find out if he was a psychotic crazy the hard way so I err.. agreed with all his conspiracy theories. Oh and … in case you didn’t know - the bottled water companies are destroying the earth because they’re taking out all the aquifier water too fast. Sound reasonable? Yeah, I thought so too. The aquifier water is needed because it cools the core of the earth. Raise an eyebrow? So did I. The aliens are going to get very angry with us if the core overheats? Er. Yeah. Whatever you say man.)

Randomly, I also ate alligator meat (extremely tasty! I mean it. The Dane and I agreed that alligators becoming endangered wasn’t surprising, considering how good they tasted). Since I watch too much TV, it’s also mildly thrilling to be able to see the season finales about a month or so before they reach the UK. W00t! And er. Yeah. the conference sorta rocked. The field I’m in doesn’t really have a single major celebrity (think RMS in the FLOSS world?) but there were couple of rather influential people in there (and I’ve even read their text books) and thus, it was a blast. Sadly though, we missed seeing the shuttle being wheeled out by a mere day. Phooey.

Hani just biled Axis2!

I’ve been reading Hani since forever. I won’t say I’m a gushing fanboy since on that particular blog, that description is no compliment. The funny thing is that most of the stuff he’s said upto now has rung true… He’s biled the utter crapheap that is EJB2 (yes, I’m qualified to talk about how much I hate that piece of shite). He regularly pillories JBoss, he’s had a go at Websphere… He’s been scathing about IntelliJ’s slide to mediocrity. In fact, he’s gotten lots of stuff right. I guess what I’m trying to say is: I trust his opinion more than most; and for bonus points, the man is funny. Ok, so his insults are a bit repetitive, but he does make fair points. More than some other Java-Hos I could name.

But this is Axis2. I am the first person to say I am unqualified to comment on what Axis is, does or can do. I’ve never looked at the code, never looked at the documentation, never had a reason to use it. But I know at least one person who is behind the project . On reputation alone, I wonder … is this bile really justified?

So the typos are unfortunate. Umm, ok. I can sorta see where he’s coming from, if not necessarily agree. But the rest of it? I don’t really see how WS02 is going to make bundles of cash either; but I’m not entirely concerned about that. Being another Redhat is their problem; not mine. The comment about students writing the stuff was a low blow. And wait, did Hani call Sri Lankans South EAST Asian? I got a map and 50 bucks that says he needs a geography lesson. But maybe I misunderstood.

I suppose I’m trying to figure out if Hani has a point and the vehement reaction he received was just bluster… or if Hani is off biling a less than worthy target this time.

It should be written off and its developers put out to pasture, and everyone should just switch to XFire to make the world a better place. WSO2 should die the horrible death it has so richly deserved in its short pathetic life.

That, my friends, is classic Hani Suleiman. So, I laughed when he did it to people/products I hadn’t known of or used before. I nodded my head righteously when he did it to products that I felt really deserved it. I’m not exactly laughing now. Am I being just a wee bit too touchy about a bile directed at Sri Lankans? Maybe.

So, I waited till the last possible minute to sleep in the subway station book my hotel room. Obviously, this means that I had a choice of forking out my entire travel budget on a hotel (believe me, I’ve done that once before. It’s mad fun, but not recommended as a way to endear yourself to the travel bid committee) OR of booking into a roach motel. Now, the two hotels that were recommended by the conference organizers as being “budget” had the following less than appealing reviews attached on a different site.

This was the dirtiest hotel I have ever seen! The sheets had been used, the bathroom was horrible. I didn’t take my shoes off!

How about:

This is the most filthy & poorly run motel I’ve ever seen.Even the locks didn’t work on the door …

or

Cobwebs in corners, Diaper behind frig., lizard on wall, 1/2 gap around the door and ac unit

.

So, no. Roach motels aren’t really my scene anymore - carefree backpacker ethos be damned.

Read the rest of this entry »

So despite the paranoia, intimations of hush hush secrecy and hyper secure delivery, a perfectly ordinary bloke delivered my passport to me about an hour ago. No, he couldn’t pronounce my name either - took my word for it. And the driver’s license I showed him had a photo which looks NOTHING like me now. Ripped open an extraordinarily fiddly plastic package and my passport was nestled in there. Flip a few pages and my panic stricken ugly mug (flowing locks and all) stared back at me.

Ok. So I now have less than 48 hours to book tickets, find a hotel, make slides and figure out what I’m going to say, pack, organize taxis and haul my ass across the Atlantic. There is a large (and lazy) part of me which is whispering “Oh sod this. Just say you got the passport too late and stay home”. I could end up in a fleabag Motel Six. I could still end up being hauled out of the queue and given the rubber gloves and vaseline treatment for being on some mythical watchlist… I could … I could … I could … Oh, what the fsck.

Still dunno what I’m going to do for sure, but at least this isn’t the first time I’ve had to leave a country at such short notice *grin*. An evil sage has been prodding me about the sun, sand, beach and chix0rs. She has a point, I suppose. She probably has a pitchfork, horns and a trident shaped tail to go with it.

Nude chix! Sloth! Nude chix! Sloth! (no, not that sloth). Which will win out in the end? tune in later to find out.

A long time ago, a person I cannot remember (this sounds like a promising intro, does it not?) said something like this… [just to make it a complete quoting disaster, I’ll paraphrase and not make an exact quote]… I could be making this shit up for all anyone can verify…

Roughly, it went something like … “There is absolutely no point in deciding anything in a vote online because forums and bands of people with agendas are liable to organize and crash your nicely constructed poll. Music, movies, film, whatever. Bands of people with a specific agenda will vote for their choice and you’ll find that what was intended to be a free and fair vote random sample of opinion becomes as slanted as a leaning tower of pisa dropkicked by an symmetry hating god.”.

That should go down as an item in the tao of the internet or something. It’s so true.

And this was proven once again with an online vote for the Miss Universe 2006 poll. Yes, I linked to that vile construct of marketing and vacuous smiles, of boob jobs and skimpy swimsuits, that “competition” designed to enslave and objectify women…where all the contestants want to save the world and bring about peace while travelling on an year long promotional tour … the Miss Universe pageant. Deal.

Ok, so peruse the candidates and vote for the hawtest wummin in that bunch. Good luck with that. Then, check out the results. Figure that Miss Sri Lanka has a whopping 40% of 28000 odd votes. Yes, more than 10000 people voted for one single person from an obscure South Asian country (stuff it, you nationalist idiots. Knowing what or where Sri Lanka is forms a reasonably hard Mastermind question in the UK, so I don’t hold out much hope for the rest of the world). Now, I’d like to say this was because this female is teh hawt; and heck, she is. I’d have voted for her myself. But maybe it’s my builtin inferiority complex, 40% of the vote seems a tad high…

And then, there is the inevitable snowball effect. People (unpaid shills such as myself) are now blogging this shite, pointing it out to even more people… more folks are now going to stampede on that site and vote for this Ms. Fernandez. You see where this heading? The hype of an obscure South Asian heading up the poll is going to become a national phenomenon. People on dialup are going to fireup their computers and check out this site to see what all the fuss is about. “No, dear. I’m going there to vote for the Sri Lankan. Not to ogle the hawt wummin in their swimsuits. Honest”.

On a random and unrelated technical note, vote.sparklit.com leaves two cookies on your browser when you vote - and they record IPs, so you can’t vote with the same one twice. Just sayin’, is all. Use that information as you will.

And yes, I voted for her. Because gaming the system is fun. Vive la online polls and vacuous smiles and gushing about world peace. Bring on Miss Congeniality.

The UK just finished paying their lend lease this year. Not that anyone is (or should be) less than grateful to the Americans for helping out in WW2; but imagine $21 billion in 1945? That’s some serious money.

Somehow, that puts the arms dealers of today (think Lord of War) in a slightly better light - we’ll give you the tools to fight off the enemy, but please pay for it. Don’t worry, we’ll wait 60 odd years for the repayment, there’s no hurry at all. It wasn’t all altruism and fighting the common enemy then; at least on the materiel side of things - and I think that’s an important lesson to remember. To be fair though, England looked to be in dire straits during the early 1940s and if Operation Sea Lion had actually been launched; the US would have had to write off most of the debt…

In other news, I am the lord of runon sentences.

Back on topic: It’s nice to think that the UK kept on paying for half a century and more - although cynically, the £45 million annual installment sounds like there weren’t many adjustments for inflation.

I have work to do. Really. I do. Then why am I blogging with far more frequency than my established pattern? Well, because my physical self may reside in one place, but mentally I’ve already packed up and gone on holiday.

You could call this laziness; and that description wouldn’t be too far off the mark either. But what I’m displaying now is a marked resistance to starting new work - which basically means not touching anything that’s on my plate at the moment. I’m going to be away from this machine for a while; so starting new work just means more stuff to remember when I get back, so the reasoning goes, and thus, I should … not start work at all. The alternative then, is to muck around adding a few unplanned features for Ach (that sooper sikrit feed reader project).

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the best things about user driven tagging is its ability to give a unique perspective on a subject. It’s such a powerful concept - given the right implementation and adequate safeguards - that I’m surprised more community based sites haven’t fallen over themselves to adopt it. One of the biggest constraints with the otherwise excellent Blogger, for example, is the inability to categorize (and ultimately, tag) your own posts into distinct orderly little boxes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rooney whacks English WC hopes in the metatarsal. It could have been worse, I suppose. No, actually. Scratch that, it could not have been any worse. If I didn’t see the challenge for myself on TV, I’d have thought one of the Chelsea players did that intentionally, but it was - to all intents and purposes - a harmless looking tackle. The Blues had already won the game, too. Anyway, that’s now left a “small” crack in the center forward position for England. Might I go as far as to say the World Cup chances are now an official lame duck? No, probably not - but most of the managers in the Premiership have voiced their doom and gloom already.

In other, slightly more cheery news: SL won against Derbyshire by 6 wickets. After the first innings debacle, I thought we were screwed - but shockingly, they seem to have recovered. I’m still thinking that the uncharacteristically late summer is going to cause problems for the batting in the tests proper, but at least we’ve done better with the opening tour matches this time around than in a few years - that’s something. Only, I also see that Slowdort might have cemented his place in the test side with his second innings performance and that, for me, is an absolute disaster.

And I’ve been spending time over the last couple of weeks watching the snooker; the final concludes tonight. It’s been a bit of a yawnfest this time around actually.